My experiences with Global ERS are documented elsewhere. The biggest issues is the complete lack of communication with Monica Gomez. It took 4 months before I received a single reply from her.

I recently left a job at Northridge and now GLobal ERS is threatening me to pay a $300 fee for breach of agreement. Since I am in the states I am wondering if this agreement has any legal binding here. Has anyone been in this position? If Global ERS was in the states, it would be ME taking them/her to court for what I believe to be professional misconduct. I suspect Global ERS is not a company but a single person working from her home. The bank account in the US is nothing more than a personal account (at a Mexican bank) and I can't find any registered business in Mexico called "Global ERS."

She has also threatened to report me to the Mexican board of education and department of immigration making my entry into Mexico difficult or impossible. I doubt she can even do this but I don't like being threatened.

Last edited by jserio on Tue Aug 21, 2012 10:46 pm; edited 1 time in total

It does seem like things were so close for you and only a few details remained to be worked out to get you housed and settled in. If you agreed to a $300 fee for less than a 20 day notice I think you should do the professional thing (even if they did not), pay it, and call it a lesson learned. I don't know your age but I am older. I could never share housing or leave it up to an employer to arrange. Too many chances for problems. On your next adventure you should angle to find a place where you can set up your own residence indepedant of an employer. Good luck, sorry DF didn't work out. So many seem to love it there.

I can understand the OP's frustrations, but on the other hand it seems like he should've known that things aren't always "by the book" in Mexico. You need a flexible attitude to make things work. Personally if I had any interest in teaching kids I would've been more than happy to be a nomad hopping from place to place for the first week or two of school- considering what his salary was. Oh well. In hindsight it maybe would've made more sense to come here a month before school started in order to settle in.

She has also threatened to report me to the Mexican board of education and department of immigration making my entry into Mexico difficult or impossible. I doubt she can even do this but I don't like being threatened.

I doubt anything will come of this...I imagine she would need some kind of court judgment against you for immigration to be interested at all, and for 300 bucks, it isn't going to be worth it for what she'll have to pay additionally to a lawyer to set anything in motion.

Agree with the above though that it would have been better to arrive earlier. Setting up here never goes quickly and adding the stress of starting a new job, I don't blame you for bugging out.

Arriving early in Mexico would have been great but I only received the jobs 3 weeks prior to the start of school. And I wasn't prepared to go to Mexico without a job offer. Now that I have been there, it does seem like it would be easy to walk the streets and find one - especially now as the schools scramble to find replacement teachers. I even thought of that but, after several bad experiences in such a short period of time, I needed to go home and lick my wounds.

It's not that I'm cheap and if I had left the job for another job or some other reason that was mine, I would have no problem with a fee. But I think 2 weeks was reasonable in finding *something* even temporary. I should also add that the school wanted to lock me in to the apartment for 1 year (they had to sign the leas) even after I repeatedly told them I wanted to find my own place in the city within a few months.

I want to like donato's post. I guess FB has gotten to me.
I don't think it's unreasonable to take more than 2 weeks to find a place to live in Mexico. I also bexarwithme that for the salary they were offering, I would have declined "housing assistance" and found my own place. You said you suspected that they were inflating the rent so that their share was very low or zero. Maybe they found that teachers who have worked in other countries expect a housing allowance, but it an exception in Mexico not the rule. I'm not saying it's good that they were dishonest about it, but just that they may not really be prepared to pay it and probably didn't really anticipate the hassel of finding so many apartments within a reasonable distrance of the school.

Oh and as to paying the 300, I'd probably just ignore Gobal ERS if it were me. I don't think they can actually make a hassel with immigration. I'm more inclinded to feel you own Northridge something than you owe Global ERS something.

Mother, I will accept your criticism and perhaps I could have been a bit more patient but I want to offer a few points. First, I would have had no problem finding my own place if I had time. I arrived the Saturday before the two-week orientation. I had no phone and Internet at the school was abysmal. The orientation was so jam-packed from 7-3 that there was no time to look for a room/apartment. On the days we finished early - usually around 1 - the school made us stay there and essentially sit around doing nothing until 2:30. Welcome to Mexico! Then there was the hour-long shuttle back to the hotel (you guys were not kidding about that commute). By time I got to the hotel, I was too exhausted to really walk and look. I did look at about 5 rooms in Condesa but all were complete garbage. If the school spent all the money they spent on putting us in hotels and just rented an apartment for 1-2 months, there would be no problem. Living in a hotel room for two weeks can be stressful, especially when you have a roommate that just doesn't talk to you. Add to that a long orientation, long commute, no phone, moving luggage back and forth 3 times, having to do laundry, and you can see something will eventually give.

You make a valid point about the school and housing. To be quite honest, I thought they would just pay half of my housing (within reason). But another email said they would try to find a place for me and the new teachers - so I took them on their word. I was also told that another teacher, who owned a home next to the school, would have rooms for rent. Unfortunately, this teacher was not there during orientation and I later found out only the teachers he recruited would live in his house. The other new teachers in my position were far less patient and expected more. But when it came down to it, the school found them housing first. Both teachers had 2-bedroom furnished apartments (one in Cajimalpa for $5K and the other in Coyoacan for $8K). Yet my unfurnished 2br in Cajimalpa was $10.5? What's going on here? IN any event, I made a choice and gave a deadline. Like the other, I don't flip flop.

As far as owing Northridge something, it's my understanding contracts mean nothing in Mexico and they could have dumped me anytime. So why can't I do the same? While I was there, I gave 100% and was dedicated to the job. And I'm also a believer, unlike some of the other new teachers who mocked the school for being Catholic. Oh well.